The Intelligent Design organization IDNet-NM
had the Zogby Polling Firm perform a survey at New Mexico's national
labs and universities. In a July 28th, 2003 letter sent to all
members of the State Board of Education (SBE), and also posted on the
IDNet-NM website at http://www.nmidnet.org/PRESS%20RELEASE.doc,
(if you get a username/password request, just click CANCEL to
get right to the page!), IDNet-NM states

"The Intelligent Design Network, inc., New Mexico Division
(IDnet-NM), announced the results of two polls conducted recently by
Zogby International regarding attitudes in New Mexico concerning the
teaching of evolution and intelligent design in New Mexico's public
schools. The first poll was of parents of schoolchildren K-12 while
the second poll focused on the scientific community and included New
Mexico's national labs and universities. ... In regard to the
teaching of evolution in New Mexico, the overwhelming majority of
respondents, both parents and laboratory scientists, favored teaching
the evidence both for and against evolution by a factor of over
4-to-1. In regard to teaching intelligent design, parents and
laboratory scientists favored teaching intelligent design by an
overwhelming factor of 5-to-1. ..."

However, many serious problems have been found with the poll.
David Harris of the American Physical Society, in an
article titled "'Intelligent Design'-ers launch new assault on
curriculum using lies and deception," (see
http://blogs.salon.com/0001092/2003/07/30.html ), says quite a bit
about the vagueness of the questions, and why even pro-evolution
scientists might be inclined to answer "Yes" to such soft-sell
declarations. Harris adds this zinger: "Perhaps the greatest
problem with the survey is the response rate. Of the 16,000
employees, a mere 248 replied. This amounts to a 1.5% response rate,
far lower than any other large scale survey I have heard of.
Statisticians I have spoken with suggest that you need more than
about a 40% response rate before you might begin to consider a survey
valid. Even so, the low response rate by itself is not necessarily
enough to destroy the validity of the survey. But there is no
evidence to suggest that the 248 respondents were representative of
the 16,000 employees. There are ways to check that the responsive
sample is similar in characteristics to the total sample but none of
that data was obtained and there are plenty of reasons to believe
that the responders were not representative. Similarly, only 31
employees from universities completed the survey, out of the 500
asked to respond. At least the large uncertainty in the data obtained
was mentioned but in the tabulated data, the sample size and what the
presented percentages mean in terms of absolute numbers is not
presented. This flaw is enough on its own to completely destroy the
validity of the survey. ..."

And, in a follow-up article titled "'Intelligent
Design'-ers' deception deepens" (see
http://blogs.salon.com/0001092/2003/07/31.html), Harris notes "I
previously reported that the IDers claimed to send a survey to 16,000
laboratory scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.
I spoke with representatives of the labs today and discovered that
there are something like 14,000 total staff and only about half of
them are laboratory scientists. Interestingly, the lab
representatives have so far been unable to find anybody who received
the survey. Seeing as we couldn't find anybody who had received the
survey, we contacted Zogby, the polling firm that conducted the
survey for IDnet, to check that the survey really existed. Zogby
confirmed that they did the survey but gave us the following
information: 'During the period June 26 - July 9, 2003 we received
402 completed surveys, giving a margin of error of +/- 5%.' But we
compare this with the statement by IDnet: 'Two-hundred forty-eight
scientists responded as follows: 103 scientists at Sandia National
Labs, 114 scientists at Los Alamos National Labs, and 31 at the
universities.' So what happened to the other 154 responses? This is a
very serious issue because the discrepancy is so large that it could
shift the results in any way that you desired. And if you are a group
with a long history of fudging data to your purposes, why would we
assume anything but that the results were biased toward the viewpoint
that IDnet wanted to push? Although not damning, this is all very
suspicious and it certainly further damages the validity of the
results. ..."

On August 13th, 2003, the president of Sandia National
Laboratories, C. Paul Robinson, denounced the IDNet-NM survey,
calling it "bogus," and affirming that Sandia
National Laboratories "did not participate in the Intelligent
Design Network's survey and do not support its conclusions."
Graphic and text versions of the Sandia statement follow.

A recent news release issued by the Intelligent Design Network
indicated Sandia's 8,000 employees were among 16,000 people surveyed
about the issue of teaching creationism along with evolution in New
Mexico schools. This release was very misleading. No such survey took
place among Sandia's 8,000 employees. When we looked closely into
this claim, we learned that of the 16,000 people at Sandia, Los
Alamos and the three New Mexico state universities who we understand
purportedly were given an opportunity to participate, only 248 people
actually chose to participate in such a survey. We have no idea how
these individuals were selected. A sample this small, from such a
large population, has no scientific validity and should not be used
to imply Sandia National Laboratories or its employees endorse the
Intelligent Design Network's ideas. I am disappointed that the
Intelligent Design Network chose to include Sandia National
Laboratories in a news release based upon a bogus mini-survey. As one
of the world's leading engineering and science laboratories, we at
Sandia are very careful to apply accepted scientific methods to all
surveys in which we participate. That is not the case with the survey
in question. We did not participate in the Intelligent Design
Network's survey and do not support its conclusions.

C. Paul Robinson

RENICK RENEGES
- AUGUST 22, 2003 UPDATE

After the Sandia letter knocking IDNet-NM's "Bogus Poll" came
out, Joe Renick stated that IDNet-NM would STOP using that
poll. From John Fleck's article "Anti-Evolution Poll Called
Bogus" (Sunday, August 17, 2003): "Renick said Friday
[August 15th] his organization plans to stop using the
poll, saying it "is turning into a distraction from the really
important business of the science standards."

FURTHERMORE, in a letter sent to all State Board of Education
members on Tuesday, August 19th, Renick says IDNet will stop using
the survey, yet still defends the results, saying "The math is the
math." Here are some excerpts from Renick's August 19th letter:

"... I understand that the results of this survey
represented bad news for some folks. In the absence of any
other ideas, attempting to discredit the survey and its sponsor is
the last resort. In the face of the facts, it is the only resort.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Robinson was misinformed as to the
nature of this survey and implicated in this freak show.

As I have stated before, in the interest of keeping the focus,
IDnet will make no further use of the results of this
survey in our efforts to promote integrity in science education.
Some will take that as an admission to the charges of fraud. So be
it. Our purposes and intentions are well-documented and bear no
resemblance to the misrepresentations of those who are opposed to
our purposes. As I said before, we believe that the results of the
laboratory survey are an interesting indicator of attitudes of
scientists in the national labs but are not necessarily
representative of the entire scientific population.

The undisputed facts are that Zogby conducted a survey. We
got the results. We published them. We did not hand-pick the
sample as charged. The math is the math. There are legitimate
questions about sample size but the effects of sample size are
rigorously defined in mathematical terms (margin of error). One
can speculate as to whether or not an on-line poll is truly
objective. You can do the same about a telephone survey. Read the
Zogby response for their position. They are the experts. ..."

MEANWHILE, the story grows more bizarre by the minute. Former
SBE member and Sandia physicist Dr. Marshall Berman conducted
his own informal poll of Sandia and Los Alamos scientists, and this
is what he found:

I was shocked when I first learned of the surveys conducted by
IDnet-NM. I spent 32 years at Sandia as a scientist, supervisor
and manager and encountered perhaps a thousand scientists and
engineers over that period. I can count on one hand the number of
Intelligent Design creationists I knew in that period. It was
clear to me that more information was needed to understand and
assess the IDnet-NM survey.

I contacted staff at the American Institute of Physics and
requested their assistance in learning how the poll was conducted
by Zogby International. In addition, I conducted my own poll of
several hundred lab scientists, a few non-science employees, and
many university professors. The results of this research are
presented below. The conclusion is that the IDnet-NM poll is
extremely misleading and biased, not statistically significant or
even valid, and their conclusions are not supported by their own
study or data.

There are about 16,000 total employees at SNL and LANL,
less than half of whom might be called scientists and engineers.
IDnet-NM did NOT send the survey to all of the labs staff.
Furthermore, treating all the employees as scientists (as they do
later in their letter) would be false. And even if all the
employees were surveyed  which they were not  the
return rate would be an insignificant 1.4%.

Using the information available from two NM science
organizations, I requested survey data from several hundred
scientists at SNL, LANL, UNM, NMSU, and NMT. 61 direct responses
were received and 81 indirect (from responders polling their own
colleagues and peers). Of these 142 responses, 137 (96%) never
received the ID poll. Not a single Sandia scientist or employee
acknowledged receiving the survey. One LANL scientist received
the e-mail survey and replied in opposition to ID; one other LANL
engineer was said to have received the survey (indirect). Two
people from NMSU and one from UNM said they received the survey
and replied negatively. So of the five scientists who received the
survey, all of them opposed ID. Yet IDnet-NM reports an ID
approval rate of 76-79% for NM scientists and 45-61%
for NM Universities. ... it is quite clear that
IDnet-NM selected the people to be polled and provided those email
addresses to Zogby. We have no information as to how those people
were selected. ... The conclusions stated by IDnet-NM are not
supported by the poll, the poll is falsely portrayed,
statistically insignificant, highly biased, and presents a
completely false picture of the views of National Labs and
university scientists.

I have personally interviewed Sandia scientists were were
supposedly IN RENICK'S LIST of e-mail addresses sent
to Zogby; these scientists did NOT ever receive the poll from
Zogby.

The heck with Denmark! Something smells really, really bad right
here in New Mexico!

LOS ALAMOS SPEAKS
- AUGUST 25, 2003 UPDATE

Here's the letter Los Alamos National Labs director Peter Nanos
sent to IDnet-NM, as well as SDE/SBE members. Nanos writes
"The claims made in that [IDnet-NM] news release is
misleading. There is no evidence that all of our technical and
scientific staff members receiveed the so-called 'poll,' nor is there
assurance that those who responded were actually scientific or
technical staff members. .... I would appreciate it if you would
refrain from associating the name of Los Alamos National Laboratory
with your effort in any and all materials. ..."